Hostile? Anyway yea you were right about the Bulls they were horrible, and that season was the first they made the playoffs after MJ left, so at the time that losing streak had everyone thinking lottery again.

And there may have been some 20 game losing streaks in the season before that, it wouldnt surprise me.

Maybe I overread the suckit part, but if it makes you feel any better, celtics were last in the league before the first "big 3 trade". And I just checked, bulls don't have one of the longest streaks, most of them belong to the clippers.

A decade ago they were still last in the Pacific Division. They did improve, but ultimately the Brand era had only had one 500+ season and one playoff appearance. So, I wouldn't even say they were good. They were like all Clipper teams before Griffin showed up: full of promise that would never materialize. And because of that, they were easily the most lampooned. No one had maintained such poor performance for so long. In fact, I believe they had the worst franchise record in all of American pro sports. They were just an easy, easy target.

Low overhead. Big market. When the Clippers signed Ron Harper for one year at $4m in 1993-94, it was the largest free agent contract the Clippers had signed at the time (Harper played a few years with them already but was a free agent that summer). When Harper's year ended, the Bulls offered him $20m over 5 years while the Clippers only offered $16 over 5 years, yet still tried to convince Harper that their deal was the better contract. Harper signed with the Bulls and ended up winning 3 championships with them.

Yep, Ron has since said that he actually appreciated his time on the Clippers, despite once saying that he was "just doing his jail time" while under contract with them. He said something along the lines of the Clippers were the first ones to really give him a chance to show what he can do out there.

Actually, Vancouver grizzlies was truly horrible. Golden State was really bad, same as Atlanta Hawks. Cleveland was unwatchable, same as the Wizards. Basically, there were a lot of bad NBA basketball being played. But to answer your question, I'd have to go with the Clippers. They've been so consistently bad since they've moved to LA, it's actually a bit startling to realize they've just now won more than 50 games. Ever.

Since 1984, when they moved to LA, they've only appeared in like 7 playoffs, the fewest of anyone in the league, other than the Bobcats. They're one of only six teams who've never appeared in the Finals (Raptors, Timberwolves, Grizzlies, Pelicans, Bobcats), and the only team who's been in the league since the 60s to never even appear in their Conference finals. (Bobcats, Raptors, & Pelicans are the other three.)

You have to realize, that ironically, a lot of the NBA owners want to be like Sterling, the Clippers owner, as he actually made money off his team, regardless of how good or bad his team was. He's actually gotten better about spending money to field a team in recent years. I like to believe he was the inspiration of Sarver (the Suns ownership) that caused the Suns to trade away so many picks and players to stay under the salary cap, regardless of how it affected the team's chances of winning a title.

You also have to realize, that the early 2000s was really a 'dry' point in terms of true stars and good teams. Expansion plus the craze of drafting high school kids way before they were ready, plus the fact it was before the rookie salary cap implementation, caused a lot of really bad play. There were a lot of bad teams in the early 2000. Every damn team in the east was so majorly flawed, that it took extreme(ly bad) reffing (2006, Heat) or the Lakers falling apart (2004, Pistons) to give the East any champions at all.

everyone migrated West, except for Jason Kidd, who stupidly went east for his wife's 'acting' career. Kobe got drafted by the Hornets, immediately traded to the Lakers for Vlade Divac, who pretty quickly ended up back west, with the Kings. Shaq went west. Phil Jackson went west. Scottie Pippen went west, first Houston, then Portland. Chris Webber went west. Hell, even Anfernee Hardaway went west. (Dikembe Mutombo I would count, but he didn't want to leave, and felt he was being used as trade bait by the Nuggets, something he didn't enjoy.)

similar, but worth a separate mention: All the good big men were on the west coast. I'm still not sure quite how it happened. I mean, the east had some decent big men (Alonzo, Dikembe & maybe Ben Wallace), but let's compare everyone who was an all star taller than 6'9" from 2000 - 2005:

East

West

Alonzo Mourning

Kevin Garnett

Dikembe Mutombo

Tim Duncan

Shaquille O'Neal

Shaquille O'Neal

Theo Ratliff

Chris Webber

Jermaine O'Neal

Karl Malone

Antoine Walker

Antonio McDyess

Žydrūnas Ilgauskas

Vlade Divac

Brad Miller

Brad Miller

Ben Wallace

Dirk Nowitzki

Jamaal Magloire

Elton Brand

Kenyon Martin

Yao Ming

Antawn Jamison

Andrei Kirilenko

Dale Davis

Amar'e Stoudemire

Peja Stojaković

I'm taking the west. All day every day. (Brad Miller and Shaq played all star games on both teams, which is why they appear on both sides.)
Now, why does that matter? Because only the 1975 Warriors, 1979 Sonics, the 90s Bulls and the current Heat teams have ever won a championship without having an all-star caliber type center. (2008 Celtics and 2010 Mavs didn't really, either, officially, but Garnett basically played a lot of center, and the Mavs had Tyson Chandler, a great defensive big who was 2nd all-defensive team that year.) That's damn near 85% (53/63), and 8 of those championships came because the Bulls (Jordan) and the Heat (Lebron) had the best player in the entire league. By far. (Now you know why everyone will go crazy trying to sign Dwight this summer, even though he's a bit of a diva. Good big men can at least have you realistically dreaming of a title.)

Pau Gasol, Dirk Nowitzki, Yao Ming, Tony Parker, Nenê, Manu Ginobili and Luol Deng. Those are all players, all foreign born, all drafted to the west. (Not counting Nash, as he played college ball in America.) It really came down to the fact that teams in the west, specifically all the Texas teams, were all smarter, and all realized that instead of drafting high school players that may not work out, they'd rather draft foreign players who at least played opponents who were out of high school. (I have to ignore Portland (Sebastian Telfair, Jermaine O'Neal, & picked up another High Schooler, Rashard Lewis), because they had to be coked up to run all those jail-blazers teams.)

And who did the east pick? Kenyon Martin, Kwame Brown, Andrea Bargnani, Andrew Bogut, Dwight Howard and Lebron James. I see two busts, two ok, one pretty good (Dwight) and Lebron. That's not great. In fact, by picking up on what the western teams were doing, the east was able to help even out the talent level, though I would still contend that it's still not fully there yet.

But these conference swings tend to happen over time. In the 80s, only the Lakers were truly great in the west. Which is why they went to all but three finals in the 80s (81 Rockets, 86 Rockets, 90 Blazers). Then the Bulls ruled the 90s other than a brief window introduced by Jordan taking a 18 month leave of absence. 2000s, all Spurs and Lakers. 2010s? Who knows? Right now it's the Heat's to lose. And assuming the cap situation can be fixed, only the Heat can slow the Heat down.

That's what Chris Cohan did in the bay area. Fans will still fill seats in a big place, you're still going to get a tv contract, so there's no financial motivation to build a good team for some owners.

Well, they sort of tried to do that in the last bargaining agreement, by making sure that teams spending has a floor as well as a ceiling. If you don't spend enough money, that money goes into a pot that is shared among the other teams, I believe.

The Atlanta Hawks were just awful when I was growing up. I was a Bulls fan, who were TERRIBLE from the time when Michael Jordan retires to the drafting of Ben Gordon and Luol Deng, and my family made a point to only go to Hawks matchups so we could see the Bulls win

To be fair, the Bobcats were an expansion team who missed out on the first overall pick and had to settle for Emeka Okafor. If the lottery allowed for expansion teams to automatically get the first pick and everyone else fight for picks 2-14, their transition into the NBA would have been much easier. With that said, they fucking sucked in the 2000s.